Survival pvp, does it exist?

I have been thinking alot lately about this idea i've been having. The idea consists of players playing minecraft as they should but they are allowed to destroy and kill eachother. Kind of like a sandbox PVP, where you try to defend your creation and also try to kill the other team.

Hopefully you will get the gist of what i am saying, if not then i'll try to explain it in better detail.

My Tekkit server, that will be open to the public in a few days, is exactly this.
You will be playing just as you would in survival, being able to have protection on your builds and what not (assuming you have played long enough to buy protection with the in-game money.), but also being able to pvp anywhere in the world except spawn and the town (as they are non-pvp zones).

The problem is that it's nearly impossible to find enough players to make this fun, and at the same time moderate it well enough to prevent cheating.

For someone like yourself maybe.
Not everyone can run a server, most people are bad at it...VERY bad at it. But if you know what you are doing then its not a problem.
We have spent that past 2 months just testing and setting stuff up to make sure there is noway anyone can cheat the system. As for moderating the server, that's the easy part. With the right plugins and staff that know what they are doing, it is easy to keep an eye on everyone and make sure nobody is cheating.

This is the 2nd server I have run. The first one was NEVER greifed and we had a steady flow of players everyday.
But then you take the Tekkit server (that is still running) that I use to moderate...its been greifed SEVERAL times, and the owners answer to fix it is reset the map every time. There are now only about 3 people who play on the server, and they are all Mods/Admins.

Do research, find good staff, and don't be an idiot, and it is very easy to run a successful server.

Lots of servers have PvP, though Minecraft isn't really a good game for that kind of thing. There's a lot of potential for innovative gameplay, setting traps and luring people into them, but in reality it's mostly just a bunch of people in diamond armor and diamond swords sprinting around and left-clicking each other until someone eventually dies.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

The problem is that it's nearly impossible to find enough players to make this fun, and at the same time moderate it well enough to prevent cheating.

What is the "enough" players you speak of. How many players do you feel is needed to have decent fun on a Survival server? Personally the more the better as long the server is laag free (assuming map has either no borders or very large borders).

Not necessarily. Hunger games usually refers to servers with maps that have limited resources or space and open PvP, so players frequently fight and kill each other over dwindling resources, hence the "hunger" part.

And open PvP server running vanilla settings would just be a generic anarchy server.

I also do landscaping on weekends with some mexican kid that I "hired". He's real good because he's 100% obedient to me and does everything I say while never complaining. He knows that I am the man in the relationship and is completely submissive towards me as he should be.

Yeah i agree, but how people were finding it is beyond my understanding. I dont cheat in games as a general rule of thumb, well, warp whistles in mario

Why people use hacks....sigh

They don't even have to use hacks. A simple xray texture pack and boom! Hidden base found....

The difference between a SJW and an activist: An activist tries to get a ramp added to a building for easier wheelchair access. The SJW tries to get the stairs removed because they might offend people who can't use them.

I guess because it would be like having the chance of living and really fighting with no fixed blatant story like MMORPGs and given that since every player has an equal chance to kill each other(unless someone has diamond or even armor at all and potions), thus it would be abit exciting. However the problem is resource is scarce and time consuming to gather and the more players, the more one needs to hide when they have to log out. Not to mention they have a limited back pack slot and no reliable market, it eventually spirals to a mindless slaughter even though people think the chances of meeting one another is close to nil. So the general concept is a real adventure type feel with the danger of good and bad people, however only so few care and mostly it would only work for role-playing.